Today’s Speaker: Brother Randy Wages will conduct the 11:00 am service today. Pray for him as he delivers God’s word.
Television Broadcast: Our Reign of Grace Television program is being broadcast on WFXL Fox 31, Channel 4. The program will air every Sunday morning at 11 AM.
Radio Broadcast: Sunday morning at 9:30am on 98.7 FM –WISK. To hear sermons click here
Web Sites: Visit our newly designed web site at: www.rofgrace.com
How deep, how dreadful, of what awful magnitude, of how black a dye, of how ingrained a stamp must sin be, to need such an atonement-no less than the blood of him who was the Son of God-to put it away. What a slave to sin and Satan, what a captive to the power of lust, how deeply sunk, how awfully degraded, how utterly lost and undone must guilty man be to need a sacrifice like this. "Ye are bought with a price." Have you ever felt your bondage to sin, Satan, and the world? Have you ever groaned, cried, grieved, sorrowed, and lamented under your miserable captivity to the power of sin? Has the iron ever entered into your soul? Have you ever clanked your fetters, and as you did so, and tried to burst them, they seemed to bind round about you with a weight scarcely endurable? But have you ever found any liberty from them, any enlargement of heart, any sweet going forth from the prison-house, any dropping of the manacles from your hands, and the fetters from your feet, so as to walk in some measure of gospel liberty? "Ye are bought with a price." Ye were slaves of sin and Satan ye were shut up in the dark cell, where all was gloom and despondency; there was little hope in your soul of ever being saved. But there was an entrance of gospel light into your dungeon; there was a coming out of the house of bondage; there was a being brought into the light of God’s countenance, shining forth in his dear Son. Now, this is not only being bought with a price, but experiencing the blessed effects of it.
--- J.C. Philpot
The Loving Kindness of God
"O continue thy lovingkindness unto them that know thee." (Psalm 36:10)
The Son of God has grappled with death. He has gone with all the sins of the church to face death; the sting of death entered into His heart, and He drew it out again; and now death is a friend to the child of God, for the Saviour has conquered "death, and him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." (Heb. 2:14) All this was done in loving kindness! And He has ascended up on high, having finished the work, conquered every foe, satisfied every particle of the demands of justice; He has gone there, and is now surrounded with glorious majesty. He went up as a conqueror, with the sound of the trumpet; as it is said, "God went up with a shout, and with the sound of a trumpet." "Open ye the gates, and let the King of Glory come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord mighty in battle," (Isa. 26:2; Ps. 24:8) that has conquered all His foes, redeemed His church, satisfied every perfection of Deity. Child of God; He is thy Head; and thou, virtually united with Him, went up with Him virtually into glory. You ascend up on high, and are there virtually seated with Him, until He brings you home at last, one glorious man, perfect in Christ Jesus the Lord. What loving kindness! O, would to God this sweet blessing were fully revealed in every contrite heart, and that the Comforter would bring the light, and power, and glory of it into our souls!
--- John Warburton – preached April 08, 1855
DO YOU NEED AND WANT MERCY?
Most people don't feel that they really need mercy. Do you need mercy? I do. Mercy is described as the kind treatment of those that have shown themselves your enemy. It is for the miserable. The mercy of God must of necessity be God not giving us what we deserve in ourselves. We deserve death and wrath from Him as the holy God because we are sinners who have sinned against Him! We have been “enemies in our minds by wicked works.” We have trusted in and relied upon our own works to save us rather than the grace of God in Christ while the scriptures say clearly that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy, he saved us...” (Tit. 3:5) God has said that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” (Rom. 9:16) Yet, most are still “going about to establish their own righteousness.” Mercy can never be deserved, earned or gained by the offender in any way. If we receive mercy, it must be at His sovereign throne. From God who has said, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” (Exo. 33:19; Rom. 9:15) The apostle Paul said of himself, that he “was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy,” (1 Tim. 1:13) How does God show mercy? Only in the crucified Christ! Those who receive mercy from God confess the same thing. We were “by nature, the children of wrath even as others.. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) (Eph. 2:3-5) Grace and mercy are like Siamese twins, inseparable and where God has mercy in not giving us what we deserve, grace is there giving us what we don't deserve! An eternal inheritance. Both in Christ who bore what we deserved for our sins and in whom we receive every blessing of God's grace. Behold the man Christ Jesus hanging on the cross, there is mercy and grace! There He is performing the mercy for those “vessels of mercy which he had afore prepared unto glory.” (Rom. 9:23) Blessed be the name of the Lord who is plenteous in mercy, who has appointed a people to mercy in Christ through His death for them as their Substitute. They are described by many names in scripture but are also identified by their own confessed NEED! “Lord, have mercy on me...” This is always our case: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, thatwe may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”
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